Leseprobe

135 6 u Louis Henry Sullivan: Wainwright Building in St. Louis, 1890–1892. u Louis Henry Sullivan: Wainwright Building in St. Louis, 1890–1892. ries”.3 For him, orientation towards the past and dedication to contemporaneity did not constitute a contradiction. Schultze-­ Naumburg’s opinion reflected the conventional tenor in all publications of that time on the state of architecture. It can therefore be regarded as a valid basis for further discussion here. Accordingly, in the following, my aim will not be to analyse progressive and reactionary moments as a melange that is as irresolvable as it is contradictory, but instead to present the buildings in Hellerau as products of an inherently stringent design agenda.4 Design practice and history Ever since art historians discovered Classical Modernism, its departure from tradition has been celebrated as a measure of quality and as the vanguard of an imminent change of style. But placing focus on the new can often mean losing sight of the fact that ‘developments’ – as the etymology of the word itself suggests – take place as organic processes in which historical references are an intrinsic component. Such historical references are not always immediately apparent, as a few select examples from the history of architecture should illustrate. The Mathildenhöhe is one of the most outstanding testimonies to the reform movement. Conceptualised as a “Darmstadt Artists’ Colony”, it was built, for the most part, by Austrian architect Joseph Maria Olbrich on behalf of Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig zu Hessen und bei Rhein from 1900 onwards. The patron’s expectation was that it should promote both the glory of the ruler himself and the economic development of his realm. But the aim was more far-reaching. The aspiration was for the colony to have an “anthropological” effect as a Kunstreligion (art-as-­ religion) project. Not without a certain degree of pathos, one contemporary reviewer commented that the purpose of the colony was to help people to achieve a “higher life”,5 which would open up to them through enjoyment of art, since aesthetic experience, in particular, rendered people receptive to sublime values. The transformation envisaged found its ostensible realisation in the colony’s architecture.6 The Ernst Ludwig House – the common atelier building – and the large Glückert House both had an imposing entrance archway recessed deep into the wall, drawing the attention of arriving visitors to the fact that a new world of art, a place of new lifestyle, was about to be revealed to them.7 As “modern” as the plans for Darmstadt may have seemed, they were, in fact, self-evidently based in tradition. In 1898, during his time in Vienna, Olbrich had already daydreamed of building an entire city on an open field according to a uniform concept that would regiment not only each individual house but also “every chair and pot”.8 His vision of planning not just individual buildings, but a whole urban organism, has multiple precedents in occidental architecture. One need only recall the ideal cities of the Renaissance – such as Sabbioneta (1554–71) or Palmanova (from 1593) – or the Baroque urban designs of Karlsruhe and Mannheim, or the Salines de Chaux of French architect Claude-Nicolas Ledoux (1775–78). In the final analysis, Olbrich’s idea of creating a Gesamtkunstwerk (complete work of art) that included the entire interior design has its roots in Baroque art theory. Even architect and industrial designer Peter Behrens, one of the forefathers of modernism, made frequent – and self-evident – use of history: his crematorium in Hagen (1906/07) picked up on the medieval façade incrustations of San Miniato al Monte in Florence; the inner courtyard of his linoleum pavilion – displayed at the Dritte Deutsche Kunstgewerbeausstellung Dresden (Third German Arts and Crafts Exhibition in Dresden) in 1906 – showed clear parallels to antique colonnades; and his studies of proportions were based on evidently thorough examination of the architectural theory of Renaissance artist and architect Leon Battista Alberti.9

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